


A Cool Breeze

by brightephemera



Series: FionneNorbertTurin [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bards, F/M, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Memories, Wind - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Hawke is ready to dance the night away when he gets an unexpected invitation.
Relationships: Male Hawke/Josephine Montilyet
Series: FionneNorbertTurin [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975444





	A Cool Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> In this continuity, Norbert Hawke stays with the Inquisition after the game’s events, but Bethany vanishes. Turin Trevelyan never completes Josephine’s plot line. This conversation occurs shortly before Corypheus.

“So then the Baron says to me, “I served my patent of nobility to my children as a snack! Do you expect another?”

Someone tapped Norbert Hawke on the shoulder. “Baron, must I fill my glass myself?”

Hawke, resplendent in white and green yet concealed by a gold bear-snout mask, turned toward the divinely fresh-faced Josephine Montilyet and swirled his barely-touched drink. “Dear lady,” he said in a thick accent, “I shall fetch the vineyard here if it pleases you.”

She smiled and walked with him, somehow leading though staying firmly at his side, until they passed a servant and he plucked her a deep rosé.

“‘Baron,’ your accent is…an interesting invention,” she murmured, directing him among knots of partygoers. The Denerim estate was huge, the music loud, the patrons drawn from across Thedas. “Everyone wonders who you are, and can agree only that you are no Orlesian.”

“I would improve the Empire by my very membership.”

“Just not its modesty.” Josephine paused in the arch of the portico. “Will you walk outside with me?”

“We can pick up Varric.”

Josephine had a glass in one hand. And a Orlesian fan in the other. She gave the small shake of a “no” and a coy smile. “Is conversation with me alone so daunting?”

“Not at all,” he recovered. “Conversation with a beautiful woman is always welcome.”

“And conversation with a gallant man most illuminating.” It was polite, meaningless…pleasant. The Inquisition had taught him to enjoy society, its games and its veils and its denials. With its thrilling suggestion that the mystery man with the awful accent was associated with the Inquisition in some mysterious capacity.

Josephine smiled beside him and stepped out into the gardens.

They entered a courtyard, oval, bordered by dark bushes and half overrun with arbors of jasmine. A fountain dampened all other sound, and the moonlight played at shadows with the roses below.

Hawke and Josephine easily set a decorous distance. No one ever had to show him a social convention twice. He noted her expression: cordial, collected. “I hope you're enjoying the evening,” he said.

“Very much. Your spectacle makes these functions far more interesting.”

“So spectacular you separate me from my audience?”

“You are so restrained at home. I wonder whether your face at these functions is not your true one.”

The word shook his glib reactions. “Home? It’s not much of a face, back at Skyhold.”

“We have come to appreciate it. Now. I must know,” she murmured archly, “with your disguises and assumed identities, whether you are committed to the life of a bard.”

“No. They’re a little fatal for my taste.” He meant it to be funny, and the pain in her eyes shocked him. “I—I didn’t mean anything by that, obviously it’s a serious subject—”

“Ah,” she said quietly.

Maybe just a downward turn of her lips, a line between her eyebrows, but he couldn’t recall ever having seen her so shaken. “What is so terrible that it upsets you? If you can tell me. I’d listen.”

The fan spoke. Not now.

“Of course. I’m truly sorry, I didn’t mean to make light of it.” Well, he did, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her with it.

“You understand,” she said. “—The fan, that is.” She seemed to recover a little life. “Where does a Free Marcher learn such things?”

“A well-traveled friend.” It seemed impolitic to reminisce further about a different beautiful woman. Isabela had taught him over many days and many drinks. It was just the kind of skill she would pick up for no reason, and he would learn for the same.

A fragrant, cool breeze blew from farther on. Hawke shucked off his mask and closed his eyes.

He felt Josephine watching him. “Where do you go when the wind blows?” she said.

“Oh, Varric could tell—”

“No. No. Where do _you_ go?”

He sipped his wine. He struggled to separate the facts from the overwhelming feeling. He did love a cool breeze. “It reminds me of a spot in Kirkwall. The posts for the harbor chain. Bethany and I used to spend hours just watching the ships and talking to each other. And then…” he swallowed. “Then I spent hours there, watching the ships. It’s the only time I ever felt like I understood Kirkwall, and that was when I was practically outside it. It…it’s beautiful, I don’t know if it’s still there. They probably melted it.”

The bravado of the incognito party was gone. He would say, later, that reality crashed in.

But it wasn’t like before.

Before, reality crashing in meant Meredith, Orsino, Petrice, Mother, Grey Wardens taking Bethany, culpability, losing, losing, losing. That was what reality crashing in meant.

Here something else crashed, something fine and bright. The reality was that he was a trusted envoy of somebody else’s responsibility, and he was with Josephine Montilyet in one of the most beautiful houses in Thedas. That was the reality that crashed in. It left him breathless.

And he had gone and dirtied it with Kirkwall’s name. He licked his lips and felt like a fool. A fool who was standing shockingly close to his listening counterpart. “There are better places to take a woman like you.”

“If you remember some good of that place, keep the jewels,” she said gently. “The rest is behind you.”

Hawke clapped his mask on while attempting to figure out words. Kirkwall. Jewels. She had to be thinking of something else. Kirkwall had left him nothing.

Except a cool breeze.

“Hawke? I will point out one flaw in your tour-in-disguise plan.”

He summoned his nerve to the performance of the occasion. “Ah em tellink yeou, ze ac-cent stayz.”

She dimpled. “The more you wear that mask, the less I see of your smile.”

“Come now. Any time you’re in sight you already know it’s there.” She was only returning his polite nothings. She was too sweet-tempered to do otherwise. He took off the mask and, yes, smiled. He dropped the disguise in the nearest bush and returned to her side, closer than before. If he were remotely qualified to stay out here just learning her he would. Barring that fantasy, well, there was a party, and music, and the loveliest eyes in the whole place. “Will you come inside with me?”

She smiled and moved by his elbow, only this time she followed his lead, subtle, stable. He didn’t recognize what was meant by the fan fluttering and closing. Maybe someday she would tell him. She was good at these things.


End file.
